objective measure of "good"

David Duffy · 16 Jun 2006, 04:06 · from 2006-June.txt.gz

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From: David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:06:28 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (urth) objective measure of "good"
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0606161342470.21081 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> Alan,
>
> Thank you for posting that -- I do like Tom Stoppard a lot
> (especially _Travesties_ and _Dogg's Hamlet and Cahoot's
> Macbeth_ and ... Oh, heck: I like Tom Stoppard), and what
> he says here does seem relevant.
>
> In fact, I _do_ have some thoughts on how one can make a
> useful and empirical and all that stuff definition of "good"ness
> for a piece of fiction, but they are (for the moment) insufficiently
> choate for me to post anything about them, and anyway I
> want to see if anyone else comes up with a similar approach.
>

I fear this will be worse than a discussion about the definition of
science fiction.  Maybe we should concentrate on objective measures of
"bad".  Just in the last month or so, I have read several
newspaper and journal articles:

1) Allan Ginsberg is a bad poet and _Howl_ is undeservedly popular
2) JM Coetzee is a bad writer and undeservedly received the Nobel
3) Dan Brown is a bad writer and undeservedly made lots of money ;)

Each article provided quotes from the offending author -- "objective"
evidence.

My favourite review of _Finnegan's Wake_ was by a psychiatrist, who said
he frequently saw these types of word salads and neologisms in the writing
of psychotics, and confidently made the same diagnosis for Joyce.

Or how about the frequent comment that HP Lovecraft is *much* better in
French translation ;)

Which is to say, *I* *know* what "quality literature" is, and can spot a
wooden sentence as well as Tom Stoppard's character, but _de gustibus_.

David Duffy.

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